November 2011

American Renaissance magazine
Vol. 22, No. 11 November 2011

CONTENTS

Betrayed by His Church
The Chosen People
The Galton Report: Francis Galton in Memoriam, Part II, Race & IQ
Racial Unity and the American Republic
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters

COVER STORY

Betrayed by His Church

The craven firing of Frank Borzellieri

Frank Borzellieri, who at one time spoke and wrote frankly on racial issues — he addressed several AR conferences — has been fired as principal of a Catholic school in the Bronx. The archdiocese, his employer, behaved in the most craven manner, firing him less than 24 hours after the appearance of a dishonest newspaper article.

In recent years, Mr. Borzellieri has not been active in racial matters, concentrating instead on serving his students. His six-year record as a teacher and a principal was exemplary, and he never spoke about race with students or faculty. He was fired simply for holding certain views and having the courage to write about them — years ago.

What prompted Mr. Borzellieri’s firing was a July hit piece in the New York Daily News. Writer Corinne Lestch called him a “firebrand” with ties to a “white supremacist publication” which was, of course, American Renaissance. She quoted from his books, in which he pointed out that “diversity is a weakness” and that increasing numbers of blacks and Hispanics will bring a New Dark Age to America.

Miss Lestch quoted the Southern Poverty Law Center as saying that Mr. Borzellieri was still “intimately involved” with AR. As usual, the SPLC got it wrong. The last time Mr. Borzellieri spoke at an AR event was in 2002, and he has not written for us since a piece five years ago about the soccer World Cup.

Miss Lestch made much of the fact that the school where Mr. Borzellieri worked, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, is heavily black and Hispanic. Naturally, she failed to mention that he is widely liked, or that during his two years as principal there had never been the slightest hint of “prejudice” or “discrimination.” Nor did she note that before his appointment at Mount Carmel, Mr. Borzellieri taught at St. Barnabas High School and Blessed Sacrament High School, always earning the highest ratings from students and colleagues; no one suggested he was ever unfair to anyone.

At one time, Mr. Borzellieri had a very high public profile. In 1993, he was elected to School Board 24 in Queens, and was reelected twice, for 11 years of total service. He was an unabashed partisan of Western Civilization, and was probably the best known school board member in the whole country. He made headlines when he called a press conference to announce his call to remove library books that promoted homosexuality and contempt for America. He also called for the removal of a biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. that he found particularly mendacious and offensive. He was invited to write essays for USA Today, Newsday, and even the New York Daily News! He was twice voted the most popular on the board, and would have continued to serve had his school board not been eliminated as part of a reorganization of the city school system.

He spoke at four American Renaissance conferences — 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002 — where his witty, upbeat talks were always immensely popular. By our count, he wrote five articles for AR, the last in 2006.

Before making a career in the Catholic school system, Mr. Borzellieri was a columnist for the Leader-Observer newspaper chain in New York City. His tart columns on immigration and race created a furor, but were hugely popular, and his editor always defended him.

It is important to note that there was no incident or even allegation that prompted the Daily News article. A reporter simply hashed over Mr. Borzellieri’s years-old writings and associations. She had a dead easy job: His record is an open book — no fewer than six books, to be exact — and he has never concealed his views.

What makes the archdiocese’s actions particularly contemptible is that important church figures knew of Mr. Borzellieri’s writings, studied them carefully, and officially pronounced them compatible with church teaching.

In 2007, when Mr. Borzellieri was working at St. Barnabas High School, the principal, Michael Musante, recommended that he be promoted to Dean of Discipline. Monsignor Edward Barry, the head of the parish, read Mr. Borzellieri’s books and sent them to Monsignor Michael Hull at the Archdiocese for examination. Monsignor Hull’s job was to vet materials to make sure they did not violate Catholic teaching. He assured Monsignor Barry that the books were fine, and that the promotion should go through. Mr. Borzellieri later took on more responsibilities as Dean of Student Affairs, even as he continued to teach English and journalism.

It is the very books that Monsignor Hull reviewed — and approved — that formed the basis of the Daily News article.

Two years later, in 2009, Mr. Borzellieri was hired as principal of Our Lady of Mount Carmel School. Monsignor Barry, who had sent Mr. Borzellieri’s books to Monsignor Hull for approval, recommended Mr. Borzellieri very highly to Mount Carmel’s administration:

I hired Frank in 2006 as a teacher in my high school. From his teaching position he was promoted to Dean of Discipline as well as moderator of our high school newspaper. In the three years of his employment Frank has always been punctual, reliable, industrious, balanced, open to new ideas and a team player with good communication skills as an administrator. Frank always exhibits a positive attitude toward the students and the school, all the while maintaining discipline in the school and living up to the school’s mission statement. I am sad to have him leave us; however I am glad that he is pursuing his talents to the best of his ability.”

Mr. Borzellieri’s principal also wrote a strong recommendation:

Frank served in the dual capacity of teacher and Dean of Discipline and performed his duties with energy, efficiency and integrity. Frank brings to his work a determination to do his very best and to serve the interests of the school and its students. . . . [H]e gained the trust and respect of the students who saw him as even handed and fair, and they actually taught him how to smile while dealing with disciplinary matters — again, no small achievement with teenagers! . . . He will continue to grow as responsibilities are given to him and would be a fine choice to lead a school. He possesses the experience and maturity to do a fine job. I heartily endorse his candidacy for the position.

In his new post as principal at Mount Carmel, Mr. Borzellieri impressed his new parish boss, Father Eric Rapaglia, who renewed his contract twice. Mr. Borzellieri was fully expecting to return to Mount Carmel this fall when he was contacted by the Daily News. He realized immediately that reporter Corinne Lestch was going to write a hit piece, and gathered signatures from former colleagues for the following statement:

We the undersigned are either present or past employees of St. Barnabas High School. All of us worked with Frank Borzellieri when he was a teacher and the Dean of Student Affairs at St. Barnabas. Never once did we know of any complaint by either parents or students against Frank on racial or ethnic grounds. Never once did a student come to us and state that Frank had mistreated them or discriminated against them at any time on account of their race or ethnicity. With the overwhelming majority of students, Frank was well-liked and respected, despite the fact that he was a strict disciplinarian. We are outraged that anyone would claim that there were racial complaints against Frank while he was at St. Barnabas High School. In a school of many races and ethnicities, Frank Borzellieri conducted himself with love and fairness toward all people, in the true Catholic tradition.

Mr. Borzellieri even went to Facebook and found former students who signed a statement making exactly the same points. Every one of the students was black or Hispanic.

Needless to say, Miss Lestch was not interested in the truth. All she wanted was a titillating story about a “white supremacist” running a school full of blacks and Hispanics. Mr. Borzellieri had directed her to many people — some of whom she even interviewed — who told her what a fine teacher and administrator he was. She did not print a word from them, of course, but instead passed on rubbish about how he was still “intimately involved” with a “white supremacist” publication for which he had not written for five years.

This ignorant article prompted even-more-ignorant bloggers to rave about Mr. Borzellieri’s “hate filled belief system” and to claim that “Frank Borzellieri doesn’t like anyone who isn’t white.” Television and radio reporters piled on, besieging diocese headquarters and Mr. Borzellieri’s home.

Miss Letsch’s dishonesty is no surprise, coming out of the gutter some still playfully call “mainstream journalism.” But what about the Catholic Church? Does it not stand for eternal verities? Not any more. Its behavior could not have been more contemptible. It issued a lick-spittle statement claiming that Mr. Borzellieri’s views were “incompatible with the philosophy and practices” of the school — the very views the diocese found perfectly acceptable four years ago — and fired him on the spot.

Mr. Borzellieri did not even have a chance to talk about the Daily News article. There was no meeting, no consultation, no explanation to parents. Six sterling years with the diocese, letters of praise from superiors, statements from colleagues and students — none of that mattered to the terrified little monsignors of the Archdiocese of the Bronx. No doubt they thought not even the sign of the cross could ward off a charge of “racism,” when all it would have taken is a little honesty.

As part of his dedication to a career in the Catholic system, Mr. Borzellieri had gone back to graduate school, where he earned two master’s degrees. He has heavy student debts — and no job. He also has medical conditions that he cannot treat because he has lost medical insurance. He would be deeply grateful to anyone who can send help to

Frank Borzellieri
Box 780142
Maspeth, NY 11378

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BOOK REVIEW

The Chosen People

Richard Lynn, The Chosen People: A Study of Jewish Intelligence and Achievement, Washington Summit Publishers, 2011, 408 pp. soft cover $39.00, hard cover $60.00.

Why are Jews so successful?

The Chosen People by Richard Lynn

Professor Lynn begins by pointing out the extraordinary success of Jews in almost every field. In the 19th century the restrictions that had prevented most Jews from advanced nonreligious study began to be lifted in most of Western Europe, and by mid-century, “people began to observe that Jews were outstandingly successful, and began to speculate that this was attributable to their intellect.” (Unless otherwise noted, all quotations are from Professor Lynn.)

At that time the great bulk of Jews were still living in Eastern Europe, but owing to pogroms beginning around 1880, Jews began migrating to Western Europe and especially to the United States. They formed part of the massive immigration to the US in the period from 1880 to 1924.

Prof. Lynn writes:

They arrived as penniless refugees unable to speak the languages of their new countries; they were the ‘huddled masses’ from the most backward region of Europe. Yet by the middle decades of the 20th century, the children and grandchildren of these immigrants were doing far better than their Gentile hosts on all indices of socioeconomic status and earnings and outperforming them by several orders of magnitude in obtaining elite academic distinction . . . .

The development of IQ tests confirmed the impression that Jews were unusually intelligent, and Professor Lynn’s extensive review of the literature indicates that Jews in the US have an average IQ of 110 compared to 100 for other Europeans. This would help account for their outstanding performance in a variety of fields. Though Jews are only about 0.2 percent of the world population, half the world’s chess grandmasters, for example, and 16 percent of Nobel Prize winners for science have been Jews. For Professor Lynn, the purpose of his book “is to document and explain such achievements.” It would be a mistake to think that these are the accomplishments of all Jews, however, as they are mainly the achievements of Ashkenazi Jews, the Jews of Eastern Europe.

Professor Lynn explains that there are four major subpopulations of Jews, differentiated genetically by their different experiences following their expulsion from Israel in the first century AD. The most populous group, by far, are the Ashkenazi, who migrated to Western Europe. However, “In the period between 1290 and 1500, Jews were extensively persecuted and expelled from Western and Central Europe . . . . Most of them migrated eastward into present-day Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Russia.” There they remained until the mass migrations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Those who stayed were, in the main, killed by the Nazis toward the end of World War II. Most of those who survived the war migrated to Israel and other, mainly English-speaking countries.

A second group, the Sephardim, migrated to the Iberian Peninsula after the Roman expulsion, where they lived, largely under Muslim rule, until 1492. Jews flourished during the early period of Muslim rule, but from about 1000, a change in Muslim leadership led to increased persecution. When Spain drove out the Muslims in 1492, it also expelled all Jews who refused to convert to Christianity. Portugal expelled its Jews in 1496. Most Iberian Jews then went to the Balkans, though others migrated to the Middle East, the Netherlands, and Italy. Prof. Lynn notes that “their descendants in the mid-20th century numbered about two million and were widely dispersed throughout the world.”

A third Jewish group, the Mizrahim, settled in various lands in the Middle East and North Africa during various diasporas beginning about 600 BC. These lands were conquered by the Arabs in the 8th century, under whose rule Jews were tolerated but subject to various restrictions. This area was conquered in the 16th century by the Ottoman Turks, who “provided a generally benign environment for Jews and other non-Muslims.” That is the main reason why Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal made their way into the Ottoman Empire.

A fourth group, the Falashas, “are Ethiopians who converted to Judaism at some uncertain time many centuries ago.” The state of Israel recognized these genetically distinct Africans as Jews who were, therefore, entitled to take advantage of the Jewish Right of Return. Prof. Lynn writes that “by 1998, virtually all of them had left Ethiopia and taken up residence in Israel. They numbered about 80,000 . . . [or] about 1.4 percent of the population of Israel.”

With the exception of the Ethiopians, the three Jewish subpopulations greatly resemble each other genetically and are distinguishable from Gentiles. Nevertheless, centuries of separation produced considerable differences among them, due in part to intermarriage with Gentiles, even in the face of strict endogamy rules.

The most notable difference among Jewish groups is average IQ. While the Ashkenazi average is 110, the Sephardic average is about 99, close to that of Europeans. The Mizrahim score about 91, markedly lower than Europeans, but higher than the Arabs with whom they have lived, whose average is about 84. The genetically distinct Falashas have IQs of about 70, typical of sub-Saharan people.

These IQ differences have had an important impact on the achievement of each group. This is especially clear in Israel, where they live side by side. The Israeli population of about 6 million people (in 2000) is about 40 percent Mizrahim, about 40 percent “European,” and about 20 percent Arab Muslims. Comparisons are complicated, however, because the 2.4 million characterized as European include 110,000 Sephardim. Furthermore, many in the group classified as European Jews are immigrants from Russia, a large number of whom — some Israeli demographers estimate as many as 900,000 — are not Jews at all. They are ethnic Russians “who pretended to be Jews in order to obtain permission to leave the Soviet Union.” For these reasons the average IQ of those classified as European Jews is estimated to be about 106, lower than would be the case if all were Ashkenazim.

Nevertheless, on all measures of social and educational success, the Europeans do better than the Mizrahim, who in turn do better than the Arab citizens, a ranking perfectly consistent with IQ estimates. Of particular interest are the Ethiopians, who do very poorly, and behave like American blacks. According to an Israeli researcher, many “identify with an ‘aggressive and semi-criminal African-American youth culture’ and have become a ‘kind of ethnic underclass.’ ”

The largest portion of Prof. Lynn’s book deals with the performance of Jews (mainly Ashkenazim) in just about every country in which they settled. The most striking finding is the very great similarity of Jewish achievement everywhere. Without exception, Jews outperform their non-Jewish neighbors by very large multiples. Whether in education, in professional and managerial positions, in prestigious awards, in income, and in musical and artistic fields, Jews are on average five times more successful than Gentiles.

In Austria, for example, Jews were not given full civil rights until 1867. Nevertheless, in the period 1873 to 1910, Jews dominated most of the professions in Vienna even though they were only 10 percent of the city’s population. They were 40 percent of the graduates of the Gymnasium (elite high schools), 62 percent of the lawyers, 50 percent of the doctors, 57 percent of the journalists, 40 percent of the bank directors, and 70 percent of the members of the Vienna stock exchange.

Jews significantly outperform European Gentiles in verbal, mathematical, and analytic abilities, but do not generally exceed Europeans in visual and spatial abilities. This is reflected in the fact that Jews tend to be most successful in professions such as medicine, law and literature, but not nearly so much in architecture, engineering and sculpture. They do outperform Europeans in these fields, but to a lesser degree, and probably by applying their general intelligence to maximize performance. It is interesting that the success of Jewish artists in the modern era has coincided with the rise of conceptual, nonrepresentational art; they were especially prominent in the Abstract Expressionist movement.

The United States contains the largest number of Jews outside of Israel. By the end of the massive immigration period of 1880 to 1924, there were about 4.2 million Jews in the US and they represented 3.5 percent of the population. Today they number 5.7 million, but represent only about two percent of the population because other groups have grown more quickly.

Most immigrants could not speak English, but even as early as 1908 they represented 7 percent of the students at Ivy League universities, a number that had grown by 1919 to 13 percent at Yale, 20 percent at Harvard and Brown, 25 percent at the University of Pennsylvania, and fully 40 percent at Columbia. They made up 90 percent of the students at City College and Hunter College in New York City. In the following decades, efforts to limit Jewish enrollment kept percentages fairly constant in the Ivy League.

Jews are overrepresented in high-status occupations. In 1945, 53 percent of Jews held professional and managerial positions compared to 19 percent of the total population. By 2000, the figures were 68 percent versus 35 percent. Jewish women have an almost identical occupational profile, with 51.4 percent in the professions and 16 percent in management.

In law and medicine, Jews are overrepresented by a factor of about five. While Jews are somewhat underrepresented in college teaching, they are heavily overrepresented on elite university faculties, by factors of 7.4 in mathematics to 13.3 in law. Sixty-two of the 200 American Nobel Prize winners have been Jewish, and Jews were six of the 16 winners of the prestigious Fields Medal and the Wolf Prize in mathematics. Jews have also taken 52 percent of the Pulitzer Prizes for nonfiction.

The Jewish presence in entertainment is well known. Professor Lynn notes that “from the 1920s on, Jews have dominated American music in three areas: popular songs, musicals and classical. In the golden age of Tin Pan Alley (1920-1960), about half the leading songwriters were Jews.”

In Hollywood, Jews founded the most prominent film companies, and still dominate the industry. Professor Lynn quotes movie critic Michael Medved: “Any list of the most influential production executives at each of the major movie studios will produce a heavy majority of recognizably Jewish names.”

Many of the most famous movie stars were Jews who took non-Jewish-sounding names, such as Douglas Fairbanks, Danny Kaye, Tony Curtis, Hedy Lamar, Judy Holiday and Judy Garland, to name just a few. More recently, figures such as Paul Newman, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand, and Steven Spielberg made no effort to conceal their Jewish origins. Prof. Lynn notes that in 1990, American Film magazine reported that the CEOs of eight of these top ten entertainment companies were Jewish.

“Jews have been prominent among the owners and executives of American TV, radio and newspapers.” Of the major networks, CBS, NBC, and ABC, all were controlled by Jews at one time or another. CBS was founded by William Paley, who is Jewish, and has remained under the control of Jewish chairmen to this day. David Sarnoff, also Jewish, ran NBC from 1930 to 1970, when control was passed to his son, Robert. In 1986, the network was taken over by the General Electric Corporation.

ABC was acquired by the Walt Disney Company in 1996, at the time run by Michael Eisner and now headed by Robert Iger, both of whom are Jews. Two of the most prestigious and influential newspapers, “the New York Times and the Washington Post, have been owned and largely staffed by Jews.” Professor Lynn remarks that “the Sulzberger family still controls the Times and also owns 33 other newspapers, including the Boston Globe . . . [and] 12 magazines . . . with a circulation of more than five million each; seven radio and TV broadcasting stations; a cable-TV system; and three book publishing companies.”

In addition, “the three largest circulation news magazines — Time, Newsweek, and US News and World Report — are largely owned and run by Jews.” Whether Jews control the media is a contentious issue; it is indisputable, however, that they have an influence in the media hugely disproportionate to their numbers in the population.

Having established with extraordinary diligence the success of Ashkenazi Jews, Professor Lynn addresses the question of the origins of these Jews’ high intelligence. He dismisses environmental explanations on a number of grounds. He points out that “the four Jewish peoples in Israel occupy a similar environment, with the same access to healthcare and education, but the intelligence differences between them are pronounced.” The oft-expressed explanation that the Jewish emphasis on education explains higher IQ is easily dismissed since Jewish children get high scores even before entering school. The role of “pushy Jewish mothers” can be dismissed because many studies have found that “family environmental factors have no long-term effect on the intelligence of children.” One is left with genetic explanations.

Based on historical evidence, Prof. Lynn assumes that before migrating out of the Middle East, Jews probably had IQs similar to those of other Semitic peoples of the region, which today is about 84. This means that between that time and the present, Ashkenazi intelligence had to grow by 26 points. This works out to an increase of 1.25 per century and 0.3 points per generation. Genetic changes of this size are very unlikely to occur by chance, and evolutionary factors must have played a part. Selective pressures in the 2000 or so years since the Jews migrated into Europe must have produced this large gain in intelligence. However, as Prof. Lynn notes:

There are three problems that require explanation. First, what has brought about these different IQs of the Ashkenazim, the Sephardim, and the Mizrahim? Second, why have these three subpopulations of Jews developed higher IQs than the Gentiles among whom they have lived? Third, why have the Ashkenazim acquired their pattern of high verbal, mathematical, and reasoning abilities but weaker visual and spatial abilities?

One prominent theory is that Jewish practices and customs had a eugenic effect. This position is taken by Kevin MacDonald in his book, A People That Shall Dwell Alone. Perhaps the most important of these customs was the high status accorded to religious scholars, which meant that wealthy men encouraged their daughters to marry scholars and their sons to marry the daughters of scholars. “These ‘eugenic marriages’ brought wealth and intelligence together and normally produced relatively large numbers of surviving children,” since wealth conferred an advantage against disease and privation.

Another eugenic practice — this one externally imposed — may have been the measures taken in Austria and Germany in the 18th century to limit the growth of the Jewish population: quotas on Jewish marriages, special marriage taxes and licenses for Jews, allowing only first-born sons to marry, etc. In such circumstances, the least influential Jews, those with little wealth or scholarship, often had to postpone marriage or forgo it completely.

A third factor suggested by Prof. MacDonald is that men, in particular, who failed to gain prestige through scholarship, may have been more inclined to leave the faith than those who were more successful. This is also the opinion of Charles Murray as put forth in his Commentary article, “Jewish Genius.” These eugenic practices would also help explain the IQ profile of the Ashkenazim, since the study of sacred texts required a high verbal IQ but not necessarily a high visual-spatial IQ.

The main problem with this theory, according to Professor Lynn, is that these practices were also common among the Sephardim and Mizrahim, and cannot explain the considerably higher IQ of the Ashkenazim. It would explain, however, how Jews from all three groups achieved higher IQs than their host populations. A somewhat related explanation is that the slaughter of Jews throughout European history may have been inadvertently eugenic, in that the wealthier and more intelligent Jews could escape to safer locales or avoid being killed by paying ransom. While there is little evidence for this, it is not implausible and would explain the lower IQs of the Sephardim and Mizrahim, who were not massacred to the same extent as the Ashkenazim.

Gregory Cochran, Jason Hardy, and Henry Harpending have proposed a second explanation in their paper, The Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence. They argue that around the 13th century, European Jews were restricted to only a few trades. This was largely because of their exclusion, for religious reasons, from the guilds that dominated Europe’s economy. “Jews were allowed to be money-lenders, to open banks and charge interest on loans, which were prohibited for Christians, to work as tax collectors and import-export merchants, and to deal in second-hand goods as peddlers.” In most of these occupations, with the exception of peddlers, “Jews would have needed strong verbal, mathematical and reasoning abilities to assess risk and make calculations.” And since such occupations allowed for a better standard of living, those who engaged in them were more likely to assure the survival of their offspring and the passing on of genes that promote such abilities. This might explain the Ashkenazim’s unique IQ profile since, unlike the Christian craftsmen, they would not have needed such strong visual and spatial abilities.

This theory is supported by the fact that Ashkenazi Jews suffer from a number of genetic disorders produced by genes that may have a positive effect on intelligence. These genes would probably have been eliminated from the gene pool if they had not conferred some significant advantage. These genes, furthermore, are not common among Europeans or among Sephardic or Mizrahi Jews. This theory can also account for the Ashkenazim-Mizrahim difference, since the Jews living under Islam were not, according to Prof. Cochran and his colleagues, concentrated in intellectually demanding jobs, but were often relegated to “disagreeable or despised occupations.” All of these explanations are highly speculative, but rapid advances in genetic research could bring greater certainty.

Professor Lynn points out that while the high IQ of the Ashkenazi Jews can explain Jewish success, it cannot fully explain the extent of that success. Given the IQ difference between Jews and Gentiles, we would expect that Jews would be twice as likely as Gentiles to have IQs in excess of 115, which is the minimum required to become, for instance, a physician or lawyer. However, Jewish participation in medicine and law is more than four times greater than would be predicted by IQ alone.

In general, Jews do not differ in any appreciable way from Gentiles in the things they value, with one exception: They have a greater desire to achieve economic and social success, that is to say, they are high in “achievement motivation.” Professor Lynn suggests that, like many personality variables, this may have a partly genetic basis “brought about through having been selected by eugenic customs, persecution, and discrimination.”

In this book, Professor Lynn has more than accomplished his goal of documenting and explaining the extraordinary accomplishments of Jews in modern societies. Nevertheless, I suspect many readers will be disappointed that Prof. Lynn does not address the many contentious issues raised by the influence of Jews on modern Western culture. Professor Lynn chose not to write such a book. What he has done is provide a powerfully argued, thoroughly scientific analysis that can be relied upon as a sound resource by those who do wish to address these vexing issues.

Dr. Roth is Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Dowling College. He is the author of The Perils of Diversity: Immigration and Human Nature.

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ARTICLE

The Galton Report

Francis Galton in Memoriam, Part II, Race & IQ

The previous column discussed the ideas on intelligence Francis Galton advanced in his 1869 book Hereditary Genius. These were that there are considerable differences in intelligence between people, that intelligence is a single entity that can be directed towards a wide variety of activities and occupations, and that intelligence is largely determined genetically. Let us now consider Galton’s work on race differences in intelligence and temperament.

Sir Francis Galton

Sir Francis Galton

Galton evidently thought about this question during his travels in Southwest Africa (now Namibia) from 1850 to 1852, which he described in his 1853 book, Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa. His contact with the natives left him with a low opinion of their intelligence.

Galton’s method for calculating race differences in intelligence was to estimate the number of intellectually outstanding individuals produced by different peoples, in relation to the size of the population. He argued that a population with a high average level of intelligence would produce a large number of geniuses at the high end of the normal distribution, so the percentage of geniuses could be used to calculate the average intelligence of a population. Using this method, he concluded that classical Athens (around 530-430 B.C.), which produced Plato, Aristotle, and other geniuses from a small population, had the highest average intelligence of any population in history. He estimated that next came the Lowland Scots, followed by the southern English, with sub-Saharan Africans and Australian Aborigines far behind.

Galton made these estimates well before 1905, when Alfred Binet in France devised the first intelligence test, so there were no test data with which to calculate race differences. Galton therefore used an ingenious method based on a 16-grade, equal-interval scale that ranged from the mentally retarded to geniuses. Each grade was the approximate equivalent of 10.5 IQ points on the modern intelligence test, and he used this scale to calculate the relative averages of different groups. (See graph below for Galton’s calculations for blacks and Englishmen.)

Galton's Graph on English and African Intelligence

Galton concluded that the intelligence of the Greeks of classical Athens was nearly two grades higher than that of the contemporary English. This would give them an IQ of approximately 118 on a modern intelligence scale, compared to an English average of 100.

Galton recognized that the Greeks of his own time did not have anything like the high ability of those in classical times. This has been confirmed by IQ tests, which have found that the contemporary IQ of the Greeks is approximately 92. To explain this, Galton proposed that the population had changed, largely as a result of immigration, and that “the high Athenian breed decayed and disappeared” (1869/1962, p. 398). While the Greeks of the present day are predominantly dark-haired and brown-eyed, the Greeks of classical Athens were predominantly “fair-haired from the north,” as Bertrand Russell put it. Jon Sims confirms this in his article, “What Race Were the Greek and Romans?

Galton estimated that the average intelligence of sub-Saharan Africans was about two grades below that of the English, which would be an IQ of approximately 79 on a modern intelligence test. He calculated that the Australian Aborigines were at least a grade below the sub-Saharan Africans, the equivalent of a modern IQ score of approximately 68. These calculations were to prove remarkably accurate.

Alfred Binet’s intelligence test was soon translated into English by Lewis Terman in the United States, and since then a great deal of IQ data have been collected from many parts of the world. These were collated in 2006 by Prof. Richard Lynn. He calculated the average sub-Saharan African IQ at 67, twelve points lower than Galton’s figure of 79, and the Australian Aborigines IQ at 62, five points lower than Galton’s figure of 67.

Galton attributed to the Lowland Scots an average intelligence about one-third of a grade higher than that of the English, which would be the equivalent on a modern intelligence test of an IQ of approximately 103.5. However, no evidence has emerged to show that the Lowland Scots had a higher average IQ than the English in the mid-19th century. In fact, the Scots today have an average IQ about three points lower than the English, which appears to be attributable to the selective emigration of more intelligent Scots over several generations, which reduced the average of those who stayed behind.

Galton did not include the Chinese in his calculations of racial IQs, but he held them in high regard. On June 5, 1873, he published a letter in the Times, in which he suggested that Chinese should be encouraged to settle in East Africa, with the expectation that “they would multiply and their descendants supplant the inferior Negro race.” He added that “the gain would be immense to the whole civilized world” because the Chinese were “endowed with a remarkable aptitude for a high material civilization” whereas “average negroes possess too little intellect, self-reliance, and self-control to make it possible for them to sustain the burden of any respectable form of civilization without a large measure of external guidance and support.”

Galton believed there were race differences in temperament as well as intelligence. In his autobiography he wrote of the “wild impulsivity” of blacks, and contrasted it with “the self-complacency of the steady-going Chinaman” (1908, p. 317). He wrote at greater length on the temperament of the Chinese in his 1873 letter to the Times, arguing that the Chinaman was “seen to the least advantage in his own country” because of bad government, but that Chinese flourished as emigrants:

The natural capacity of the Chinaman shows itself by the success with which, notwithstanding his timidity, he competes with strangers, wherever he may reside. The Chinese emigrants possess an extraordinary instinct for political and social organization; they contrive to establish for themselves a police and internal government, and they give no trouble to their rulers so long as they are left to manage those matters by themselves. They are good-tempered, frugal, industrious, saving, commercially inclined, and extraordinarily prolific.

These observations have been confirmed in modern times. The Chinese have become a successful “model minority” in the United States, Canada, Europe, and throughout Southeast Asia.

Finally, Galton also believed that Jews “appear to be rich in families of high intellectual breeds.” He did not research or develop this conjecture, but many studies have shown that he was right. Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray calculated in The Bell Curve that Jews in the United States have an average IQ of 112.6 compared to 100 for gentile whites. Prof. Richard Lynn recently published an extensive analysis of the intelligence of the Jews, in which he calculates IQs for Jews in the United States, Britain, Canada, Poland, and Israel. He estimates the average IQ of Ashkenazi Jews at 110, so Galton was right about that, too.

References

Francis Galton Hereditary Genius. London: Macmillan, 1869. Republished 1962 by Collins.

Francis Galton Memories of My Life. London: Methuen, 1908.

Richard Lynn The Chosen People: A Study of Jewish Intelligence and Achievements. Augusta, GA: Washington Summit Publishers, 2011.

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ARTICLE

Racial Unity and the American Republic

What the Founders really wanted.

Historians, politicians, and the media often misrepresent early American history. Take the motto of the United States: E Pluribus Unum, which is Latin for “from many, one.” How often have we heard it quoted as if it were an early sanction for large-scale immigration from all parts of the world? — as if national unity will spring, as if by magic, from any level of diversity the government imposes on the historic American nation.

Its original meaning had nothing to do with racial or cultural differences, but with federalism. The word “many” meant the thirteen states, which from the moment independence was declared, became sovereign, independent republics. It was the union of this confederation of states, with its diversity of regions and economies, that was meant by the phrase E Pluribus Unum. The motto was made part of the Seal of the United States, created in 1782 and retained after the ratification of the Constitution in 1788, because the United States continued to be a confederacy of states, not an agglomeration of disparate peoples. As we will see, the founders never conceived of their country as multi-cultural or multi-racial.

One of the most influential books of the 1780s was J. Hector St. John De Crevecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer (1782), which was widely read in England and France. Crevecoeur was a French nobleman, born in 1735, who visited England, travelled to Canada, and fought for the French during the French and Indian War. After the war, he moved to the colony of New York, and in 1769 settled down to farm in the Hudson River Valley. His book is based on the seven years he lived there, an idyllic time of peace and plenty abruptly ended by the American War of Independence.

The third of Crevecoeur’s letters has the title, “What is an American?” and one sentence from it is quoted over and over, always out of context, to suggest that racial diversity was present from the beginning: “Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.” But what did Crevecoeur mean by “all nations”? He tells us Americans are:

a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. From this promiscuous breed, that race, now called Americans, have arisen. The Eastern provinces [the New England states] must indeed be excepted, as being the unmixed descendants of Englishmen.

Therefore, even though Crevecouer writes that an American “is neither an European, nor the descendent of an European,” Americans were a new but still entirely white nationality. The Census of 1790, the first in American history, confirms his observation. It found that aside from the 18 percent of the population that were slaves, the rest were of the following ancestries: 60.1 English, 8.6 percent German, 8.1 Scots, 5.9 Ulster-Scot, 3.6 Irish, 3.1 Dutch, 2.3 French, 0.8 Spanish, 0.7 Swedish, and 6.8 unassigned.

Another work that was widely read and admired in Europe was Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia. First published in France in 1785, then in England two years later, it was a study of the flora, fauna, climate, geography, economy, and laws of Virginia. In it, Jefferson explained why freed slaves could never be safely incorporated into American society:

Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances will divide us into parties and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.

Only the last part of that prediction has not come true.

Jefferson also made powerful arguments against interracial marriage, based on the need to preserve the unique aesthetic qualities of whites:

The first difference [between blacks and whites] that strikes us is that of colour. . . . And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immovable veil of black, which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites . . . .

The framers of the Constitution agreed that homogeneity of race, mores, language, and religion were the foundation of harmony and a viable republic. They understood that excessive diversity means that politics become a zero-sum game among competing and antagonistic groups. Diverse societies could not govern themselves and could be held together only by a king or an emperor.

John Dickinson, the “Penman of the Revolution,” was a Delaware delegate to the Philadelphia constitutional convention. In an editorial written later in defense of the Constitution, he asked proudly, “Where was there ever a confederacy of republics united as these states are . . . or, in which the people were so drawn together by religion, blood, language, manners, and customs?”

John Jay, a New Yorker, and a future justice of the Supreme Court, gave thanks in the second Federalist “that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs . . . .” He called such shared traits “the strongest ties.”

James Madison, a Virginia delegate to the federal convention and “the Father of the Constitution,” agreed. In the fourteenth Federalist, he observed that “the kindred blood which flows in the veins of American citizens, the mingled blood which they have shed in defence of their sacred rights, consecrate their union and excite horror at the idea of their becoming aliens, rivals, enemies.”

Alexander Hamilton, a New York delegate to the constitutional convention, and Washington’s secretary of the treasury, observed that “the safety of a republic depends on the energy of a common national sentiment, on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education, and family.”

But it was Benjamin Franklin, the most famous and esteemed American in all of Europe, who was the most explicit about the need to keep the new country white. After observing that “the proportion of purely white people in the world is proportionately very small,” he wondered why the country should continue the slave trade and “increase the sons of Africa by planting them in America, where we have a fair opportunity, by excluding all blacks and tawnys [American Indians]” of keeping the country predominantly white.

The first Congress limited naturalization to Europeans, passing a law in 1790 such that only “free white persons . . . shall be entitled to the rights of citizenship.” Could free blacks not be citizens? That question was answered in the negative by the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision of 1857, and although that decision is today vilified, it was the correct legal decision.

The question of the citizenship of blacks was raised earlier, in 1820-21, during the Missouri crisis. Northerners criticized a provision in Missouri’s constitution barring the immigration of persons of color. They said that to prevent blacks who were citizens of other states from moving to Missouri would deprive them of the protection of the privileges and immunities clause in the Constitution. The author of that clause, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina, was still alive, and he denied that he, or any other framer, intended the clause to apply to blacks: “I perfectly knew that there did not then exist such a thing in the Union as a black or colored citizen.”

Before ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, the states determined who could or could not vote in state and federal elections, and in 1790, only three states of 13 kept free blacks from voting. By 1820, 14 of 23 barred blacks. By 1840, it was 20 of 26, and by 1860, 26 of 31. It was not just southern states that adopted a racially exclusive franchise; most of the northern states did, too. By 1860, only five northern states — Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine — allowed blacks to vote, but together they held only 4.5 percent of the nation’s free black population.

The northern “free-soil” movement of the 1840s is often portrayed as friendly to blacks because it opposed the expansion of slavery into newly acquired territories. This is a historical distortion. The movement began when a Pennsylvania Democrat, David Wilmot, introduced an amendment banning slavery from any territories won from Mexico. The “Wilmot Proviso” was certainly anti-slavery, but Wilmot was no abolitionist. He did not object to slavery in the South; only to its spread to the western territories because it would crowd out whites and lower their wages. During the congressional debate, Wilmot asked:

whether that vast country, between the Rio Grande and the Pacific, shall be given up to the servile labor of the black, or be preserved for the free labor of the white man? . . . The negro race already occupy enough of this fair continent; let us keep what remains for ourselves, and for our children.

He called his amendment the “white man’s proviso.”

Daniel D. Barnard, a Whig congressman from New York, was worried not so much about the extension of slavery into formerly Mexican territories but that too many Mexicans would be incorporated into the United States. No one objected to the white-skinned, Spanish-descended Mexican elite, but Americans understood that the vast majority of Mexicans were mestizos, who could not be assimilated. As Barnard put it, “We want our own Republic and Union with a homogenous people, men of the same general race, blood, education and habits, forming a consolidated nation.”

Orestes Brownson (1803 – 1876), a Boston journalist and long-time editor of Brownson’s Quarterly Review, observed that although the United States has “a mixed population, . . . it is a mixture of the strongest races of Europe: the Teutonic, the Celtic, and the Iberian.” Fortunately, he added, “We are comparatively free from all admixture with the inferior races of Asia and Africa, and also with that of the aborigines of the country.” As a result, “our population combines the best qualities of the English, the French, the Germans, and the Irish, rapidly amalgamating into one homogenous people, with an original national character, superior perhaps, to any which the world has hitherto seen.”

Prominent Americans continued to affirm the essentially European character of the United States up until the 1950s and ’60s. Indeed, until the 1960s, practically every statement about race made by an American of any stature was “white supremacist” by today’s standards. Most Americans have no idea how racially conscious the Founders were, or that a firmly European conception of the United States was taken for granted until just a few decades ago.

Current distortions of history imply that today’s “celebration of diversity” was inevitable, that with a few regrettable exceptions, Americans have always yearned for the racial mish-mash this nation is becoming. This is deceitful nonsense designed to cut Americans off from their racial roots and to make today’s race realists seem “un-American.” The opposite is true. A sound understanding of race has always been part of our nation, and America cannot endure without a return to such an understanding.

Mr. Sims is an historian and a native of Kentucky.

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IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!


The Discipline Gap

The Chicago Tribune reports that black students are much more likely than any other group to be suspended or expelled from public schools. In a review of 2004-2005 Department of Education data, the Tribune found that even though blacks are 17 percent of public school students, they account for 37 percent of suspensions and 35 percent of expulsions. Whites are 58 percent of public school students, but account for only 41 percent of suspensions and 42 percent of expulsions. Hispanics are suspended and expelled at rates between those of blacks and whites. The Tribune did not include data for Asians.

Some state-level statistics were particularly stark. Blacks are suspended six times as often as whites in Minnesota, and in the typical New Jersey public school, they are 60 times more likely than whites to be expelled for serious infractions. In 21 states, blacks are suspended at rates more than double their percentage of the student body.

Russell Skiba of Indiana University says the disproportions are caused by “structural inequity” and “institutional racism.” “There simply isn’t any support for the notion that, given the same set of circumstances, African-American kids act out to a greater degree than other kids,” Dr. Skiba said, adding that “the data indicate that African-American students are punished more severely for the same offense, so clearly something else is going on.” Isela Gutierrez of the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition offered an explanation: “White teachers feel more threatened by boys of color. They are viewed as disruptive. What might be their more assertive way of asking a question, for example, is viewed as popping off at the mouth.”

The “discipline gap” is just as persistent as other racial gaps. Some 6,500 schools nationwide have tried to eliminate it by using something called “Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports” that aims to reduce the frequency of punishment by training students to behave well and training teachers to use carrots rather than sticks. Experts are hired to analyze teacher-student relations and identify lapses in communication. Specialized counselors try to teach the worst students better behavior.

These schools claim to have reduced rates of suspension and expulsion, but the racial gap remains. As Dr. Skiba explains, “There’s just no silver bullet for this problem.” [Howard Witt, School Discipline Tougher on African Americans, Chicago Tribune, Sept. 25, 2011.]

In the August 2011 issue of AR, “The Galton Report” reviewed recent accounts of racial differences in student discipline and proposed the obvious explanation: there are sharp racial differences in the rates at which students misbehave. Hippocrates pointed out that diagnoses of “conduct disorder” — the kind of behavior that leads to expulsion and suspension — are several times higher for blacks than for whites, and noted that the criminal conviction rates for black adults are seven to eight times higher than that of whites. School administrators everywhere are under intense pressure to narrow the gap in discipline rates, so, if anything, there is probably greater leniency for black than white misbehavior.

Hippocrates also noted that Asians are consistently less likely than whites to be disciplined. Are Asian students being coddled in every school district in America or are they simply better behaved? Asians are a problem for those who insist that “racism” explains everything, which may be why the Tribune left them out of its story.

Pink Witches

Many studies confirm that children as young as four years old are guilty of “racism.” When children are shown pictures of whites and blacks and asked whom they would prefer as a friend and who would be likely to get into trouble, white children almost always choose other whites as friends and peg darker-faced children as troublemakers. More than half of black children also favor white faces.

Equality experts say “color conditioning” may be the problem. When children associate light colors with good and dark colors with evil, it warps their racial feelings. To help correct this, British childhood expert Anne O’Connor says parents and teachers should reverse traditional color roles.

Witches, for example, should not be dressed in black, but should wear pink. Good fairies should wear darker shades. Even white paper can cause bias, says Miss O’Connor, and should be replaced by colored paper. She admits that some people think there is nothing wrong with white paper, but claims that “in reality there could be if you don’t see yourself reflected in the things around you.”

Miss O’Connor believes teachers should be “economical with the truth” when asked their favorite color, and should answer “black” or “brown” in the interests of good race relations. Crayons and paints should come in “the full range of flesh tones.”

Miss O’Connor, who designs “equality materials” for local governments in Britain, thinks this sort of thing can combat “racism,” “sexism,” and “ageism” in children as young as two. She realizes that “people might criticise this as political correctness gone mad,” but claims that “it is because of political correctness [that] we have moved on enormously.” [Julie Henry, Dress Witches in Pink and Avoid White Paper to Prevent Racism in Nurseries, Expert Says, Telegraph (London), Sept. 25, 2011.]

Anglo Saxon Meetup

When whites want to gather, allegations of “hate” cannot be far off. Meetup.com is a website that lets users set up interest groups in the hope of meeting locals with similar interests. A San Francisco-area group for whites lasted only five days; it is not clear whether the user who set it up buckled under pressure or a Meetup.com administrator shut it down.

The group’s description avoided the word “white:” “This group was created for Bay Area Professionals of Non-Color to network, unwind, and have a great time.” The description even included an anti-racism clause — “This group is NOT racist or for racists, all non-racist people are welcome” — but it wasn’t enough.

Meetup users flooded the group with criticism, calling it “inflammatory” and “racist.” One user, Joel Goldfoot, told San Francisco Weekly that “Presuming there is a cultural difference between you and me because of skin color doesn’t fly. It’s pretty offensive and pretty shortsighted, and I don’t think that’s the way the world works in San Francisco.” Mr. Goldfoot wrote a letter to Meetup asking whether an all-white group violated the site’s policies. Meetup promised to look into the matter.

One user, who says she has a non-white boyfriend, stood up for the professionals of non-color. “This group is no more racist/discriminatory than the groups who include only biracial couples, Latina/Latinos, East Indians, LGBTs, and so on,” she said. Mr. Goldfoot was not satisfied: “The argument that ‘other groups are being racially exclusive so why can’t I?’ is flawed — and frankly — juvenile.”

In an effort to deflect criticism, the group’s creator — whose identity remains unknown — officially changed its name to Bay Area Professionals of the Anglo-Saxon Culture, and wrote, “If [you] find the terminology of Non-Color offensive, feel free to exchange the term with Anglo Saxon.” He pointed out that he had lifted the group’s description word for word from an “Asian Professionals” Meetup group.

To no avail. The group was gone less than a week after its creation. [Erin Sherbert, Whites-Only Meetup.com Group Is Canceled, SF Weekly, Sept. 8, 2011. Bay Area Professionals of the Anglo Saxon Culture (cached version), Meetup, Oct. 1, 2011.]

Digital Divide

“The recession has hit minorities the hardest,” goes the popular refrain, but you wouldn’t know it from racial breakdowns in smart phone ownership. According to the Nielsen Company, in the fourth quarter of 2010, 45 percent of the Hispanics who had cells phones had smart phones. The figure for blacks was 33 percent, and for whites, just 27 percent. During the second half of 2010, 56 percent of Hispanics who bought cell phones bought smart ones. The figures were 44 percent for blacks and 42 percent for whites.

Smart phones, which have full access to the Internet, are more expensive than ordinary phones — sometimes much more so. They also require expensive monthly data plans, whereas ordinary phones can be used without data plans.

Nielson reports that during the first quarter of 2011, blacks used their smart phones to talk an average of 1,298 minutes per month, more than double the white figure of 606 minutes per month. On both smart phones and ordinary phones, blacks send more text messages than other groups: an average of 70.1 texts per day, compared to 48.9 for Hispanics and 31.2 for whites. [African-American Smartphone Penetration Higher, Marketing Charts, September 27, 2011. The State of the African-American Consumer, Nielsen, September 2011. Don Kellogg, Among Mobile Phone Users, Hispanics, Asians are Most-Likely Smartphone Owners in the U.S., Nielsen, Feb. 1, 2011.]

Defaming the Saint

Jacqueline Kennedy has made a stink from beyond the grave. An interview she recorded in 1963 that included unkind opinions of Martin Luther King Jr. was released just two weeks after the King memorial on the national mall was unveiled.

Mrs. Kennedy explained that President Kennedy had told her about some of the information gathered by wiretaps ordered by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover: “He told me of a tape that the FBI had of Martin Luther King when he was here for the [August 1963] freedom march . . . how he was calling up all these girls and arranging for a party of men and women, I mean, sort of an orgy in the hotel, and everything.”

Mrs. Kennedy also spoke of wiretapped comments King made about Cardinal Richard Cushing, who delivered the eulogy at President Kennedy’s Funeral: “He made fun of Cardinal Cushing and said that he was drunk at it. And things about they almost dropped the coffin and — well I mean Martin Luther King is a really tricky person.”

Mrs. Kennedy concluded: “I just can’t see a picture of Martin Luther King without thinking, you know, that man’s terrible.” Her daughter Caroline tried to backtrack: “If you asked her [Jacqueline] what she thought of Martin Luther King overall — I mean she admired him tremendously.” [Rick Klein, Jacqueline Kennedy on Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., ABC News, September 8, 2011.]

Chased Home

Mark LaVelle of Philadelphia was in front of his house when he saw six or seven cars pull over on his street. He saw what he estimated to be 50 to 75 young blacks and Hispanics emerge, some with bats and pipes. Sensing trouble, he went inside and told his wife to call the police. When the mob moved out of sight, he went out to take down the license plate numbers of the cars. Two white boys, ages 13 and 14, were walking by, and he asked them to help with the numbers. Just then, the mob turned the corner, spotted the trio, and began chasing them. “We got you, you white mother f***ers!” Mr. LaVelle recalled them shouting.

Mr. LaVelle rushed the two boys inside his house and told his wife to keep his young children away from the door. He went out to talk to the gang, but the thugs were in no mood to talk. “Something’s going to happen now!” one of the men shouted. Mr. Lavelle went back inside and locked the door. One man kicked open the door and several thugs stormed in. A Hispanic hit Mr. Lavelle in the shoulder with a pipe, and another punched him in the face. “All I’m hearing is my wife and kids screaming,” Mr. LaVelle recalled. He thought the next time his family saw him, he would be in a casket.

One of the blacks pulled out a gun. Just as Mr. LaVelle grabbed his arm to stop him from raising it, police sirens sounded and someone shouted, “The cops are coming!” The mob fled. Police caught two assailants at the scene, and a third just minutes later. All three — 17-, 21-, and 32-years-old — had attacked Mr. LaVelle.

Mr. LaVelle does not know what prompted the attack, but police have told others in the area that it may have been related to an incident at a nearby playground, in which a black boy was either knocked off his bike or fell off and white teenagers laughed at him. The mob may have wanted revenge against whites.

The next day, the mother of the arrested 17-year-old, along with 20 to 30 men, pulled up at Mr. LaVelle’s house and started shouting and banging on his door. Mr. LaVelle was not there but came immediately when his son phoned to say what was happening. The mother shouted, “You white mother f***er, you got my kid locked up! You got my son locked up because he’s black, you’re white.” She claimed her boy was a witness, but not an attacker. Mr. LaVelle said if that were so, it would come out in court. “If you make it to court!” said the mother. “I know where you live!”

Mr. LaVelle’s family is afraid the mob will return. “Every time I hear a car, I’m looking out the door,” he says. “It’s not a good way to live.” [Julie Shaw, Chased Home: Mob Attacks Man in His House, Philly News, Sept. 27, 2011. Tara Murtha, Mob Attacks Terrorize Port Richmond; Retaliation Threatened, Philadelphia Weekly, Sept. 13, 2011.]

Alabama Takes the Lead

Just one week after a federal judge upheld key parts of Alabama’s controversial immigration law, there were signs it is having an effect.

US District Judge Sharon Blackburn ruled that states can require schools to determine the immigration status of students’ parents, but that children of illegals can still attend school. She also ruled that during arrests or routine traffic stops, police can check the immigration status of anyone they think is in the country illegally. The state may impose penalties on immigrants who do not have appropriate papers. Judge Blackburn also upheld the provision that makes most contracts with illegals unenforceable, and upheld a ban on transactions between illegals and any division of the state. This has already had an effect: an illegal in Montgomery was turned down when he applied for water and sewage service.

Judge Blackburn did strike down several provisions. One banned illegals from applying for jobs. Another punished employers who hire illegals or who claim tax deductions on their wages. Another made it a criminal act to harbor or transport illegal immigrants. Yet another banned illegals from attending public colleges and universities. [Campbell Robertson, Alabama Wins in Ruling on its Immigration Law, New York Times, Sept. 28, 2011.]

The Obama administration immediately appealed the ruling and asked for a stay on enforcement during the appeal. Judge Blackburn said no; the state can enforce the law during the appeal. [John Schwartz, Alabama: Immigration Law to Stay in Place During Appeal, New York Times, Oct. 5, 2011.]

Just two days after the initial ruling, there were reports that Hispanic students were disappearing from Alabama public schools. There were no statewide figures, but 200 Hispanics were reportedly missing from classes in Montgomery County just one day after the ruling. In Huntsville, 207 of the city’s 1,435 Hispanic students were missing. On an ordinary day, 20 to 40 are absent.

Many of the no-shows are expected to trickle back. The law affects only those students who enrolled after September 1, and schools are supposed to look into students enrolling for the first time. Officials are reassuring illegals that the law requires information on immigrant status only for statistical purposes, and that children of illegals can still attend. [Ben Forer, Alabama Immigration Law Causes Hispanics to Leave School, ABC News, Oct. 4, 2011.]

There has been much wailing that Hispanics will be treated unfairly. However, the first arrest under the law was a 24-year-old Yemeni, Mohamid Ali Muflahi, who was picked up during a drug raid. [Lisa Rogers, Etowah County Makes First Charge in State for Immigration Law Violation, Gadsden Times, September 30, 2011.]

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Letters from readers
LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — Thomas Jackson summarizes evolutionary theory in his October review of Richard Lynn’s Dysgenics:

Prof. Lynn explains that evolution works through two effects: greater reproductive success for the fit and higher mortality for the less fit. . . . One study of Kalahari Bushmen found that virtually all women had children but only 39 percent of men did. Polygamy is therefore eugenic. . . . Prof. Lynn therefore argues that the Catholic Church had a dysgenic effect on the West when it banned polygamy. He wonders why the Roman emperors who adopted Christianity deprived themselves of multiple wives and scores of children.

The Catholic Church encouraged a tradition of monogamy that was already the norm in pagan Greek and Roman society. Greek literature presupposes monogamy from the high epic of Homer’s Odyssey to the low comedy of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. The highest praise for a Roman matron was univira (a one-husband woman, married only once). The Bible’s praise of monogamy from Genesis 2:24 to 1 Tim 3:2 was consistent with Roman mores. The church imposed monogamy on German barbarians, not Roman emperors.

If evolutionary theory as Prof. Lynn explains it is true, cultures that live by it will be more intelligent, prosperous, and creative than those that reject it. If we compare the Kalahari Bushmen, Prof. Lynn’s example of evolution at work, with the peoples of European stock, whose monogamous way of life contradicts the basic principles of evolutionary theory, is the prediction confirmed? In Cultural Insurrections, Chapter 9, “What Makes Western Culture Unique?” Kevin MacDonald discusses monogamy as one of Western ”cultural transformations that cannot be predicted by any biological/evolutionary theory.” Not predicted? Never in the history of science has any theory been more completely falsified than evolutionary theory in the face of observable phenomena. Even Marx, Freud, and Keynes must yield to it before the completeness with which its most important predictions have been falsified (and the stubborn refusal of its tenured adherents to acknowledge this).

Patrick J. Buchanan in a series of books has made a “fact-based” argument that the current plight of Europeans in their ancestral homelands is due to rejecting and ignoring traditional Christian religion: Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox. There seems to be a significant correlation between rejecting the Bible for Darwinism and reduced “reproductive success.” If Darwinians are really sincere in their commitment to “reproductive success” as the marker of human fulfillment, they should stop maligning distinctive traits of Western civilization, like monogamy and Christianity, and betake themselves to the nearest church to request baptism for themselves and their wife and child. If they reject this advice, I predict that they will soon join their role models, the Kalahari Bushmen, in the dustbin of history.

Christian Kopff, Louisville, Col.

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Sir — Hooray for Ying Ma (see “Tales From the Hood,” July, 2011). At least Asians are (sometimes) prepared to describe race relations as they actually are.

Blacks have no idea how much whites coddle and excuse them. Mexicans and Asians will not forgive wilding and flash-mobbing, nor will they hire incompetent blacks in the name of “diversity.”

It is amazing that at least some black “leaders” do not realize this. If they had any sense, they would be the most vocal supporters of immigration control in the country. Instead, they are deluded by fantasies about a “rainbow coalition” that will wring yet more concessions out of the bottomless pit of white generosity. They are in for a nasty surprise.

Susan Schwartz, Chicago, IL

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Sir — I was pleased to see in the latest issue that David Yeagley is suing Jeffrey Imm, Daryl Jenkins, and the lot. They should be made to pay for pressuring hotels to cancel contracts with American Renaissance. I’m also glad to see that AR has a secure location for a conference in 2012. I’ll be there, for sure.

John Picotti, Estacada, Or.

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Sir — I was glad to see your write up in the October “O Tempora” section about Ian Deary’s research on genes and intelligence. He and his team have finally done what pre-DNA studies could not do: prove that intelligence has a genetic basis. Until now, we have had virtually irrefutable evidence — from twin studies and the like — but no one had been able to point to specific genes and say: “This is what makes people smart.”

Unfortunately, we’re not quite there yet. Dr. Deary has only shown, to a statistical certainty, that particular DNA sequences are correlated with intelligence. He has not yet been able to pinpoint specific genes that code for high IQ, and we are probably a long way from understanding the chemical pathways that lead from particular alleles to more efficient brains. However, the scientific foundation has been laid, and with enough processing power we will find at least some of the no doubt many genes that contribute to intelligence. And there can be no doubt that those genes are not distributed equally in all populations.

No wonder Dr. Deary’s research got so little attention in the mainstream press.

Paul Arden, Novi, Mich.


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